Lundo and Flint, two plush characters with a penchant for joyriding in their 1969 Buick Electra, find themselves on a unforgettable journey in the new NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) animated short film “The Plush Life,” which is set to make its debut today at SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego, CA (NVIDIA booth 513).

The brainchild of animator Timothy Heath of the NVIDIA Digital Film Group, “The Plush Life” is the first in a planned series of animated short films that will showcase the advanced rendering features of NVIDIA^® Gelato^® GPU-accelerated rendering software.

From concept to final renderings, The Plush Life animation evolved over a period of seven months. Modeled and animated with Autodesk Maya 3Dsoftware, the film was rendered entirely in Gelato Pro software on NVIDIA Quadro^® professional graphics boards, utilizing the program’s advanced features such as depth-of-field, motion blur, ambient occlusion, and raytraced reflections. Also incorporated into the animation is subsurface scattering, which allows materials to absorb and scatter light, depth-of-shadows for rendering of the hair, and new shader technology used to create the velvety appearance of the “Flint” character.

“The Plush Life” will give attendees a firsthand look at the advanced rendering features of Gelato software, and a glimpse of future rendering technology from NVIDIA, powered by the latest NVIDIA Quadro solutions.